Western Standard - August 21, 2026


What if the West really does want out？


Episode Stats


Length

22 minutes

Words per minute

166.66

Word count

3,723

Sentence count

95


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show
00:00:20.420 of the Western Standard.
00:00:22.460 With me today is Randy Royer and Natalie St. Hilaire.
00:00:26.540 Mr. Royer is a Calgary-based entrepreneur, author, and Western Standard columnist
00:00:32.020 focused on Alberta-Western Canadian issues, democracy, provincial autonomy.
00:00:37.660 And with Randy comes Natalie.
00:00:39.880 Natalie St. Hilaire, also an entrepreneur and a columnist for the Western Standard
00:00:44.140 and, I dare say, others.
00:00:46.060 She's the host of their podcast, Nation of People.
00:00:50.200 Randy, Natalie, welcome to the show.
00:00:52.840 Thank you.
00:00:53.900 Lovely to have you.
00:00:55.060 So let me start with you, Randy.
00:00:58.780 You wrote a book called Alberta Should Lead, Not Leave.
00:01:03.900 So I guess that makes you a federalist.
00:01:06.080 Well, I don't think of myself as a federalist.
00:01:09.080 The way I view myself is I'm a people first kind of person.
00:01:12.760 And I believe that whatever we end up doing, and I think that there's flexibility in that,
00:01:18.300 but whatever our political geography turns out to be,
00:01:21.320 what i really want is i want the people to be in charge and the government institutions and
00:01:26.560 our elected and judicial people responsible to us rather than the other way around that's my dream
00:01:32.640 all right natalie um i mean you've run a podcast together i'm i'm assuming that that's more or less
00:01:40.540 how you see things as well i mean i i do see things a little bit differently than randy but
00:01:46.320 You know, I think how I characterize myself is as a concerned citizen.
00:01:51.560 And I don't necessarily have the answer about, you know, what we should do.
00:01:55.680 I think we're in the middle of a process that's really important and that a lot of other concerned citizens have started.
00:02:01.900 And I'm what I found in speaking with Randy and in understanding Randy's perspective on particularly the Constitution is that there are some serious issues that really find themselves rooted in that document.
00:02:14.840 And so it's been such a learning curve for me. And I think that adding that information and knowledge to the echo chamber or the ecosphere, the ether, is really, really important for us right now.
00:02:27.120 Well, let's talk about those issues then.
00:02:29.460 The phrase you used, you wanted to see government responsible to the people
00:02:33.920 rather than people responsible to the government.
00:02:36.400 Yes.
00:02:37.000 I mean, I think that's something that anybody who pays attention can see
00:02:40.660 has evolved over quite a long period of time,
00:02:43.700 but certainly that's the way the government would like to imagine it.
00:02:49.480 But now you're talking about the issues that surround new constitutional arrangements.
00:02:55.900 let's just name it separation independence what is it specifically that you want to change
00:03:03.200 who wants to go on that well i'll jump in if i may um so my primary thesis that i proposed to
00:03:10.480 natalie and in our podcast is that the 1982 constitution was a government-based document
00:03:17.100 that that concentrated power further into the hands of the government and we didn't even have
00:03:22.260 a say in it. There was no referendum on it. I actually voted against it because I was at a
00:03:29.400 convention in the Liberal Party where the question was put forward. And I was one of the few people
00:03:34.340 that voted against it. And the reason is because I knew that that was going to change Canada. It
00:03:40.320 was going to concentrate power. It was going to create a larger bureaucracy. So you are actually
00:03:44.740 a reformed Liberal. Well, the story in our podcast that I tell is that I entered national politics
00:03:51.620 to figure out what was going on how could we have western alienation in a democracy and so i with a
00:03:58.760 bunch of other people uh decided we were either going to join the the what was the wcc at the time
00:04:03.840 or the federal liberals because we said you know there's lots of good people in the conservative
00:04:08.140 party uh let's do something contrary so i ended up being in the in the liberal party and quite
00:04:13.720 honestly i came to understand what the problems were at the national level and i don't want them
00:04:19.200 If we have a separate Alberta, I don't want them to infect Alberta
00:04:24.140 the way it's infected Canada.
00:04:26.080 Well, Randy, what were the problems?
00:04:28.480 Once you had infiltrated the Liberal Party, what did you find?
00:04:32.940 Concentration of power is probably the biggest one.
00:04:36.240 The Prime Minister's office, for example, in the first Trudeau's era,
00:04:42.660 it was a scandalous 115 people in the PMO and the Privy Council.
00:04:47.960 Now it's 1,500 people.
00:04:50.360 And so what I understand now is that in the later stages of the Trudeau era,
00:04:55.040 this last Trudeau era, no one in the bureaucracy would do anything
00:04:58.980 without checking in the Prime Minister's office.
00:05:01.720 So the concentration of power is incredible.
00:05:04.460 That's number one.
00:05:05.960 Number two is that we have all these entrenched things that keeps the power
00:05:10.780 in their hands.
00:05:12.200 And that just fundamentally has to change in order to give the power
00:05:16.520 back to the people.
00:05:17.960 So, just supposing, and I know that you are not here to advance the independence cause,
00:05:25.560 but there are many Albertans who do want to take Alberta out of Canada.
00:05:32.680 Yep.
00:05:33.180 All right, let's say they succeed.
00:05:36.180 Are they not going to run into the same kind of dynamics where power tends to flow towards the middle?
00:05:42.980 What would you say to them?
00:05:45.100 I wouldn't use the term towards the middle.
00:05:47.140 i would say that the power tends to get concentrated and that's the problem and and the
00:05:52.020 same issues that we have at the national level it basically replicated at the provincial level
00:05:56.680 the good thing about in alberta is that we have this history of populism and of interaction between
00:06:04.560 you know the ralph klein was a good example he mean he went and talked to people average people
00:06:10.420 on a daily basis so it's a little closer so it's less of a problem but even in an independent
00:06:15.700 in Alberta with the same institutions, it will eventually get worse and worse and worse.
00:06:20.680 Natalie, do you think that's something that's peculiar to Alberta and Canada, or is this kind
00:06:25.440 of the way politics works all over the world, or at least in what we might call the liberal
00:06:30.820 democratic world? Well, I think what's changed for me is that the story I was told about a
00:06:36.500 constitution is that it was well thought out and decided upon by people that have education and
00:06:43.660 have spent time understanding how institutions should work together, what the balance of power
00:06:47.740 should be, checks and balances, really an American story about the Constitution. And I thought that
00:06:53.520 we had a similar structure. I knew it was different, but I thought it was similarly well
00:06:58.580 conceived of in Canada. What I've come to learn by talking to Randy, who was actually there when
00:07:04.020 Pierre Elliott Trudeau proposed it, and who, you know, really, you witnessed how the premiers
00:07:09.140 negotiated about the constitution was that we have this foundational document now that is really
00:07:15.560 about solving a political problem at the time for the liberals and not about how our country is going
00:07:21.500 to run in the long run with appropriate checks and balances that would hopefully stop this sort
00:07:27.620 of cascading of power into a centralized body. And that's what I'm hopeful for is a structure
00:07:35.020 and a foundation that actually has checks and balances.
00:07:38.580 Well, what do you think was the problem
00:07:40.620 that the Liberals were trying to solve in 1982?
00:07:43.940 Well, I think Quebec was trying to separate.
00:07:46.640 I think that, and ultimately, I do think that
00:07:50.100 what had become clear over the 70s
00:07:53.500 is that Alberta had a lot of natural resource wealth,
00:07:56.780 particularly in terms of oil.
00:07:59.400 And they had, I think that foundationally in Canada,
00:08:04.560 we need to wrestle with what do we do with our natural resource revenue especially who's the we
00:08:10.180 who's doing the wrestling here well between the west and the east between the west and the east
00:08:14.980 i mean we would like to be in complete control of our natural resource revenue but there seems to
00:08:19.880 be some tension right between alberta and ottawa about who really gets the the benefit of that
00:08:26.400 uh natural resource extraction of course in the original original constitution randy you're going
00:08:31.800 to correct me if i'm wrong here is the provinces have it but since the 70s i think it's become
00:08:37.220 apparent to ottawa and people out east that we might be profiting off of something that they
00:08:42.660 can't control or profit off similarly from well i think you're certainly speaking for a lot of
00:08:48.880 people when you when you couch it in those terms that brings us back to equalization and the
00:08:56.040 distribution of wealth and so on but we were talking earlier and we were talking about how
00:09:02.080 there is a set of values that seem to be entrenched in the politics of eastern canada
00:09:08.680 that we're not really sympathetic with in alberta and you know you might characterize it as like
00:09:18.980 you don't have the money but stay out of our face you know and how is it that
00:09:24.560 Ottawa gets in Alberta's face well Nigel thanks very much for setting this up because that is
00:09:30.800 exactly what we talk about in episode three of our podcast and we go back to the very roots that
00:09:36.260 the you know the populating of eastern Canada was a very different process than the populating of
00:09:41.640 western Canada and so we talk about how there's very different characters you know not neither is
00:09:48.620 right or wrong it's just they're different and uh and we talk about uh eastern canada and to some
00:09:54.320 degree the pacific uh you know vancouver and victoria they were colonies of britain they were
00:09:59.760 direct colonies of britain so when the people came there they came there to support well actually
00:10:05.040 the european king including uh including quebec and so they their character is is really uh
00:10:11.180 continuity loyalty and deference to authority when alberta and the west were colonized
00:10:18.220 They didn't have enough loyal British citizens to colonize the West,
00:10:22.540 so they opened it up to people from all over Europe and a bunch from the United States.
00:10:26.980 And those people came to the West seeking freedom, democracy, and a right to build new life.
00:10:32.460 Which is a different suite of values, isn't it?
00:10:35.940 Totally different suite of values.
00:10:38.280 And the 82 Constitution was built on the Eastern values,
00:10:43.780 and it viewed the West's values
00:10:47.080 as something that needed to be extinguished over time.
00:10:49.880 But you know, Randy or Hillary,
00:10:51.720 if you want to get, sorry, Natalie,
00:10:53.680 if you want to get right into it,
00:10:55.340 I don't think that that's the stuff,
00:11:01.080 the deferential, fall-up, tugging,
00:11:05.680 set suite of values that we're objecting to here.
00:11:09.340 We see things like the encroachment on personal liberty
00:11:13.160 that has come from a whole batch of legislation
00:11:17.680 that's before us at the moment.
00:11:19.420 They want to read your email, for heaven's sake.
00:11:22.600 If you object to some of the social values
00:11:27.160 that they're promoting, let's name them,
00:11:29.260 I mean, the trans and this kind of thing,
00:11:33.680 that's not the only one, but that's a common one
00:11:36.220 that gets brought up in conversation.
00:11:38.400 Well, then they trash you.
00:11:39.360 so that's i think what rubs a lot of people the wrong way or am i wrong and no you're not wrong
00:11:47.260 you're absolutely right uh but what we're describing is that the character is foundational
00:11:52.500 and from character comes culture from culture comes the way you think and then the decisions
00:11:58.260 that you make the actions you take and then the net results so at the very base at the very character
00:12:04.600 we have two very different ways of thinking and so those issues that you just brought up
00:12:09.760 to eastern canada they defer to authority and the authority says well we need to read your emails
00:12:15.960 in western canada we want it we want freedom we want to not be hindered by an intrusive government
00:12:22.480 and so those things are absolutely offensive to us and so that is the primary divide and so
00:12:28.660 So if we are to remain as a country, my position, and Natalie supports me on this one,
00:12:35.760 at least helps me draw it out, is that we have to have a constitution
00:12:40.520 that enables, allows, and encourages both sets of characters.
00:12:45.160 Is that possible?
00:12:46.860 Well, it is possible.
00:12:47.820 It would be sort of black and white at the same time?
00:12:49.740 Well, one of the ways to do it is to push sovereignty down.
00:12:54.840 to push sovereignty you know we talk about the two-nation policy where you know the ottawa and
00:13:01.120 quebec views the country as two nations one a sovereign quebec and the other english canada
00:13:06.400 that's a unitary state well english canada is not a unitary state the west is very different than
00:13:11.640 ontario and so let's one solution is to push the sovereign the the you know power down so that the
00:13:19.160 provinces can make those decisions not just the federal government i imagine at some point you've
00:13:24.660 been to halifax oh yeah yeah i love so well as a matter of fact so do i it was a great place
00:13:29.980 some good times there um when you go to halifax there's the fortress on the top of the hill and
00:13:35.980 the big old cannons there from 200 years ago pointing out over the over the water and the
00:13:43.120 old town is just tucked in close they got as as close as they could to protection because they
00:13:51.280 saw the government as their friend and their provider and their protector that's why they left
00:13:57.380 the 13 colonies because that was not the kind of government that was forming there
00:14:03.180 and you come out to west western canada and where is our old town clustered under the fort
00:14:12.720 you know we don't have one people got as far away from government as they possibly could
00:14:18.100 And out in the freedom of the prairies, they built their own lives the way they wanted to build them.
00:14:23.760 I see that as a picture of the difference between the Eastern mindset and the Western mindset.
00:14:31.020 What do you say?
00:14:32.600 Sorry, I'm going to jump in here if you don't mind, Natalie.
00:14:35.320 But what's very interesting is that going backwards and taking a broader perspective,
00:14:42.480 what's happening is there's a slight trend towards alberta's way of thinking that you know
00:14:49.720 government has become too intrusive and so you've taken this is happening back east this is happening
00:14:54.960 i think of ontario yes and even in quebec you know the the way they look at at uh at their
00:15:00.700 nationalism now is it's not it's not as strong as it's really more you know individualism is
00:15:06.460 gaining power and and as you said we're steeped in it deeply here in the west and it's just
00:15:13.820 starting to emerge and so that's why my view of this nation of people thing is is that
00:15:19.220 if you empower people it will encourage the blossoming of individualism in eastern canada
00:15:25.980 but you have to recognize that they they need to have the right in their province to you know to
00:15:32.080 have collectivism and and and you know the good thing about the collectivism you're talking about
00:15:37.220 you know at the bottom at the base of halifax is it's also a social um uh social glue and so you
00:15:44.700 know the the as we change and as we become more nationalist sorry more individualistic we also
00:15:51.220 want to maintain the social glue that which is the strength of the east so um but you're you're
00:15:57.120 quite right the united empire loyalists i mean literally they fled freedom and democracy and
00:16:01.640 And that populated much of Ontario and Atlantic Canada.
00:16:05.080 And somehow those ideas, go ahead, you're going to remark on that?
00:16:08.540 I agree.
00:16:09.820 I mean, I grew up in Ontario until grade eight.
00:16:13.220 And when I got to Alberta, I felt like I could finally breathe again.
00:16:16.360 And I realized it's because of this individual sovereign spirit, this pioneering and entrepreneurial idea that anybody can make something of themselves in their lives.
00:16:26.240 And you need a strong sense of individualism, I think, to feel that energy that we have here.
00:16:31.840 And it's quite different than Ontario, where it's sort of like it's who you know.
00:16:35.840 It's where you're positioned in society.
00:16:38.280 Everybody follows the general construct of things and knows their spot and follows along or tries to climb a ladder that way.
00:16:48.200 And I prefer to feel like I could make something of myself regardless of who I know or where I come from.
00:16:53.520 i've just been given the five minute signal so i'm going to ask you both to summarize what it is
00:16:59.140 that you are trying to achieve through your podcast nation of people uh where do you want
00:17:08.560 if you if you're king for a day where would you want to albertans to land when they go and vote
00:17:16.280 in this referendum on october the 19th you want to go ahead yeah well i mean i want people to vote
00:17:23.120 in a way that they feel really well informed about and with a deep understanding of the issues
00:17:28.540 that we're facing. I don't have a preference about, you know, people want to vote to stay or
00:17:34.580 they want to vote to leave. I think they have to look at the moment that we're in, the opportunity
00:17:38.720 to have leverage to change things. And, you know, what they choose to do, I just hope that I just
00:17:46.680 hope they all go out there and vote because it is a very consequential referendum. Oh, yeah,
00:17:51.560 absolutely so what specific structural reforms would you want to see to keep alberta within
00:18:01.160 confederation and happy to be there um do you mind if i go back and ask you answer your first
00:18:06.780 question first about king of the day yeah sure because i have an answer that i really want to
00:18:10.280 get out so if i were a king for that for a day the first thing i would do is sign a massive magna
00:18:16.820 card to say to everyone you have the power don't look to the king and if you have the power you
00:18:24.100 also have the responsibility so responsibility requires engagement and information and a wise
00:18:30.040 decision and i would say as king i believe in your wisdom i believe that you can think this
00:18:36.920 through and come up with the right answer and the right strategy and and so i would i think the most
00:18:42.920 important thing is empowering people and that's what we want to do on nation of people all right
00:18:47.020 okay well looking past october the 19th then um what sort of an what does success look like
00:18:57.860 what would be the kind of outcome i'm talking about the percentage support perhaps uh but
00:19:06.700 regardless of the final numbers how do you how do you hope that this settles out because somebody
00:19:14.060 is going to be disappointed someone's going to be disappointed and i'm hoping that we can find
00:19:20.480 something that replicates what has happened in alberta's history which is that we find common
00:19:27.040 ground amongst the people not a political common ground but a common ground for the people and
00:19:32.220 that we can have a massive movement towards that that's that's my aspiration i don't exactly know
00:19:37.580 what that is and it's part of our process they have to be i have a mechanism to express it and
00:19:42.000 that's where you run into the well cynical central government uh well this i mean i think that this
00:19:49.300 referendum is it could potentially i'll put it that way be that mechanism because we saw that
00:19:56.800 through the quebec separatist movement canada changed and uh there's two scenarios where that
00:20:03.520 we're looking at one is where alberta starts its march out of the country or alternatively
00:20:08.800 canada might say this is our time to grow up and to actually start thinking and i'm seeing it right
00:20:16.280 across the country right now this movement is alberta is causing people to say well what have
00:20:20.580 we done wrong and that might be it are they really asking themselves that i think there will
00:20:26.180 there's some that are or are they just oh there goes alberta again there's some that are doing
00:20:30.460 that too um no but you what you want to do is is again if you look at the entrepreneurial class
00:20:35.780 in in ontario they're questioning because they're a little bit sympathetic you look at the
00:20:41.380 individualists in in quebec they're questioning because they want individualism to rise so i
00:20:49.480 think that it's not everybody but there are those that are questioning so i think that if we decide
00:20:54.160 to stay in canada i'm hoping it's a cathartic moment that canada can come to life and to start
00:21:00.980 being what it actually could be and and i think alberta separatism could be the catalyst for that
00:21:07.280 last question to both of you how strong will the yes vote be not elite i think it's going to be
00:21:13.900 stronger than people think i think that a lot of people are going to be a number a number i think
00:21:20.040 there's a good chance they win. Really? Yeah, I do right now. Okay. How about you, Randy? I have
00:21:25.980 no idea. Oh, come on. I think, you know, it's all going to unfold with what happens, what the
00:21:31.260 leaders decide to do. Right now, I think, I mean, I just go with what the polls are saying, 30% in
00:21:36.960 favor. But I think what Natalie is thinking is that the no side, the remain side may not show up
00:21:43.220 because they message you and say, oh, this is a silly question. And I think it's dangerous to not
00:21:48.300 be engaged and that really is your message isn't it it is yes yeah thank you very much thank you
00:21:54.280 both natalie and randy thank you for joining us here today it's been great to talk to you i think
00:21:59.840 we may need to have you back i look forward to it thank you very much you're very welcome
00:22:04.020 for the western standard i'm nigel hannaford
00:22:18.300 You